Alerting is the process, usually by mean of a ringing signal, of informing a called customer that a call for that customer has been received in a switch for serving the called customer. In the simplest call, a single called customer is provided with an alerting signal. A recent innovation in alerting is a system for flexible alerting, as described in Harlow et al.: U.S. Pat. No. 5,206,901, wherein a group of telecommunications stations are simultaneously alerted and the call is established to the station that first answers. For example, the owner of a business who does not want to miss any calls may request that all of that owner's telephones be alerted at the business location, at a cell phone and at a home location. In response to receipt of a special telephone number, the switch which receives the incoming call consults its records and finds the telephone numbers of these three locations and establishes a connection to all three of these locations. When one of the telecommunications stations answers the call connections to the other stations are dropped.